She Ate of Her Heart
by I am Best
Summary: The Doctor knows she can be good. The Master knows he doesn't want her to be. (Includes somewhat vague, but spoilery, references to Harvest of Time and BFA's Master.)


A/N: This is part of a collection of vignettes that all take place in the same place, but at different times. You don't need to have read the others to read this one (the others being "They Were Friends" and "The Black Velocities"). The only thing you need to know is that there is, somewhere out in space, a tiny little world the Master made where she and the Doctor can just exist. Unfortunately, neither 'just exist' very well in each other's presence.

* * *

In the desert  
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,  
who, squatting upon the ground,  
Held his heart in his hands,  
And ate of it.  
I said, "Is it good, friend?"  
"It is bitter - bitter," he answered;  
"But I like it  
Because it is bitter,  
And because it is my heart."  
\- Stephen Crane

* * *

The Doctor grabbed her by the shoulders before she could even respond to his presence on the mushroom fields and time eddied planetoid. This meeting wasn't planned, and the Master had simply been standing there, staring off into the edge of the universe and trying not to think about anything, when he'd landed and flung himself out of the TARDIS. Her expression froze half-way between excitement and fear - bright pink lower lip caught between her teeth, eyes wide, hands raised between them, but not touching. Like she was worried he would hurt her. Her umbrella had fallen at the Doctor's first quick steps into the undulation of time and was being claimed and unclaimed by fungi.

She waited, breath knotted up in her throat, completely still. Waited for him to do something. The world around them continued to spin in, spin out.

"I know there's good in you!" he all but yelled at her. The Master went limp in his arms, head rolling because she couldn't roll her eyes hard enough.

"Hello to you, too. What brought this on?"

He glanced reflexively behind him. His companion was inside the TARDIS, but the Doctor had left the door open when he stormed out. The creature had settled beneath the console like a pet dog, eyes turned away, probably asleep. The Doctor snapped his fingers and the doors closed.

"No companions," she said, already trying to place what the curious spider fungus looking thing even was. Not a human nor humanoid. Rare for the Doctor. She wondered how he picked it up.

"No humans," he corrected. "You made that rule. You make all the rules."

"I know the rules. I don't make them." The Master knocked his hands away and straightened her jacket, black this time like his own. She's picked up on what's happened almost immediately. They'd fallen out of sync. The Master must have done something absolutely awful for him to bring outside business into their neutral ground, though. She couldn't wait until she did it in her own timeline.

"We don't have to follow any rules, Master. You don't have to be evil."

"Well no, but that's all I know how to be. That's all I enjoy. Just like you enjoy playing at being good."

"John Smith!"

The Master's arguments died on her lips, a look of confusion crowding out any swelling anger. When she realized what he was talking about, it came back twice as strong. She might not have known what brought this on, but she would absolutely not take him dredging up old personas to use like weapons against her.

"Is that the only way you'll take me? If I'm not even me? If I'm - if I'm just a doctor on some backwater colony? I hated you for that, you know. I was clawing, clawing to be free, and yet you were begging me to remain trapped, to put a man who lived for only ten years - a man who wasn't even real - over your oldest friend, because that's how you like me, isn't it? Caged. Contained." She stormed back and forth, kicking at the mushrooms and stamping on moths, grinding them to dust. Whirling so fast her skirts kept going, the Master held her hands together and thrust them out to the Doctor. "Have your cake and eat it, too."

"Yana," the Doctor tried again, taking her offered wrists. His hands were the only shackles she needed. A creature so alien, so spiteful, as to practically be fey, iron would serve only to burn the blood in her veins. "Your brilliance. That same insatiable urge to change the universe. That was you, without the disguises."

"That was a disguise. Just some ploddering old fool waiting for the lights to go out forever. Not me. And who are you to talk of my disguises? You don't even recognize me when I'm not hiding. This is not a disguise." She broke free to gesture at herself. "This, most evil of beings, is who I am."

The Doctor ignored her barbs, knew she was just trying to get a rise out of him, turn the discussion as she wanted. Her eyes were shifting everywhere but his face. The Master didn't want to have this conversation. She pulled herself inward, deeper, farther than he could go. He practically saw her shutting down.

"Somewhere in there is Yana. Somewhere, there's John Smith. Helper, healer, artist and scientist all rolled into one. You lived those lives. How can you deny them?"

"I -" the Master cut herself off, breathed deeply of the world, and sneezed. She continued to sneeze, tightly contained little kitten noises, until the Doctor's tense shoulders sagged and offered her a handkerchief. She took it and held it up to keep the dead moth bits at bay. The glare the Master sent his way dared him to even quirk a grin.

"If you hadn't been kicking up all this dust," he said neutrally, trying not to let a smile or laugh break through. There wasn't a worse time to be laughing at her. Whatever she said about rules, the only truth in their lives was this: the Master, watery-eyed in a swirl of destruction of her own making, needing the Doctor. So quick to assert herself, to play to win, only to fumble at the finish line.

At some point because he wasn't there, she broke. He would never ask what happened on Gallifrey - he didn't think he could handle knowing - but the results were plain to see. When she just handed him an army, didn't even ask to be his queen, it terrified him not for his own demons he had to face, but because the Master had already lost to hers.

He had, after some thought, almost been relieved when she established their new boundaries. A return to form, where the Doctor wasn't her everything, just her something sometimes. But they could have that without wiping out entire worlds, he believed with both his hearts. He needed to, or he'd have to kill her. Horribly, he could do it, too.

"Those weren't me, Doctor," she repeated, and it sounded close to tears. He wasn't sure if it was because of the dust or genuine. "They were just facets reflecting you. John Smith? Your carbon copy. Yana? Your honey trap. I am defined by you, Doctor, but I am not you. You want something I'll never be able to be without losing myself." The Master dropped graceless, spent, and picked up her umbrella to fiddle pointlessly with it. "Why do you have to ruin everything?"

"You killed a hundred billion people."

She killed a hundred billion people. The news brightened the Master's mood a little, though she was careful not to show it. It seemed he hadn't yet realized their timelines were a bit twisted, so the Master played along. They were never so direct with each other that she'd have to worry about being called on the lie, so long as she was vague on the details. "It's just a number. Even you, bleeding hearts and all, can't conceptualize a hundred billion little lives, snuffed out."

The Doctor wasn't the sort to touch this time around, and the Master wasn't the sort to receive any kind contact, but he felt he had to make the attempt. Simple verbal appeals weren't working. Contact was what got through to her. He knelt and hugged her to him. The Master's umbrella pressed between their bodies, one last, feeble barrier.

"Don't make me hate you, Master. I don't want to," he mumbled into her hair.

She let out a short laugh and freed an arm to wrap around the Doctor, fingers tangling in the curls at the nape of his neck. "I wish you would hate me," Her voice hitched and it was definitely not the dust. "Because then you'd be like me." The Master didn't clarify whether being like her meant she hated him, or she hated herself. She swallowed to release some of the tension building in her throat, throbbing behind her eyes. When had everything gotten so serious between them? "Best enemies, weren't we once?"

"Once." His throat hurt for reasons he refused to understand.

They weren't talking anymore. Weren't arguing. The Doctor didn't quite know what they were doing, in fact. Touching. He looked down at the top of the Master's head, where several moths had decided to make their graveyard amid her curls. She was nothing but dust and chaos and death in his arms.

The Master heaved a sigh, face buried in his chest, and thought on those halcyon days, before they'd gone too far. But that wasn't right, either. Every refusal, every denial, every betrayal. The Doctor had always gone too far, because he knew the Master would let him.

Suddenly the fingers in his hair tightened and he yelped, reaching up to pry the Master free, releasing her from the hug. She let go before he could touch her and sat back on her knees.

"Master?"

"No. Shush, Doctor." Her fingers caught the sides of his head, and the Doctor waited for her to dig her nails in and drag them down. "Shh."

He shushed, teeth clicking with how quickly he closed his mouth around another 'Master'. The one who demanded control, chaos incarnate. Her moods were mercurial as a cat's.

"I find, this time around," the Master began, "I'm a much more honest person. Because one of us has to be honest. A question: the Doctor lies, correct?"

He nodded carefully, mindful of the crescents pressing into his cheeks harder and harder the higher her voice spiked. The Master really was going to skin his face and wear it as one of her silly, silly disguises.

"I'm going to tell you a story. And when it's over, I want you lie to me. Okay?"

The Doctor nodded again, because doing anything else was dangerous.

"Once long ago, there was a man. This was a naughty man, who liked naughty things like death and conquest. Now this naughty man was a part of something much, much bigger than himself. It shaped him and created him. But when that something died a thousand, screaming deaths - " she sank down, practically straddling the Doctor. Her voice caught in her throat just remembering. Damn Rassilon and his tortures, tearing away all her hard-won control. And damn the Doctor for his horrid averageness, his ability to move on, leaving the Master to burn too brightly all on her own, to burn away to ash. She didn't want hugs, or consolations, or comfort designed only to placate her. She wanted to tear at his face until his mind was laid bare at her feet, until he understood.

The Doctor's hands came to rest on her waist. He felt the story she wove in his mind. This wasn't one story, but two, three, more. The details a little different each time, but the outcomes the same. He saw a graveyard, a mansion, a TARDIS skin the Doctor hadn't used in ten bodies. He heard the desperate quiet, the drums, the laughter of a hundred thousand incarnations of her. Every failure to help her.

She got a hold of herself and continued. "They died, and he was free. It was quiet. So very, very quiet, Doctor. And that man begged the Doctor to take him. To save her - oops, I mean him. And what did the Doctor do?"

She was looking at him with pupils so wide, so intense like black holes. She wanted him to lie. Take me, Doctor. Save me. He only had to lie to change the story. He was so tired of lying, though. It hurt more in the end.

"He said no." The Doctor barely got the words out. The Master always lived in fantasies, but that couldn't be one of them. Because he never saves her. He can't, not in the way she wanted.

She was off of him like a spring, like he'd burned her. He'd only had to do one, tiny thing. "You think you want me good, want me docile, but you don't! Yana and Smith and a hundred other possible versions are in here, yes, just as the Valeyard and a hundred evil people exist inside you. You could have had them, but you didn't want them because they weren't me. And now you don't want me, either, because I'm not them.

"If you don't want me, then I won't need you."

She picked up her umbrella as the Doctor scrambled to his feet. The Master pushes him away with a sharp prod. "I'm a little upset that you can't follow basic instructions, and I really think killing a hundred billion people might make me feel better, sooo. Goodbye." The Master opened her umbrella and the ladder dropped. She latched on.

He didn't even attempt to follow, frozen on what she'd just said. She was off to kill a hundred billion people. She hadn't yet in her timeline, might not have even planned to until he told her she did, completing a causal loop. He hadn't meant for this to go so wrong.

"How do you come to such wrong conclusions all the time!" he yelled after her, even as her TARDIS wheezed out of existence. "Master? Master!"

The Doctor slumped in defeat. The world around him continued its silent death-undeath-deathless dance choreographed by the Master.


End file.
